The temporary moustache, another “Anglo-Saxon” arrival in France

After Halloween, or the American version of it, which is now established enough in French minds to invade the supermarkets with chocolate-filled pumpkin heads and the like every year, France seems to be adopting another “Anglo-Saxon” tradition – Movember.

This annual month of not shaving the upper lip in order to remind other men that they should get their prostate checked has officially arrived. There was even a professional rugby match in Montpellier that was free to spectators with “hirsute upper lips” to highlight the start of Movember, or Movembre as I’m sure we have to call it.

Moustache-growing for prostate cancer. It’s a tenuous connection, I feel, and I daren’t think what the equivalent might be for women and breast or cervical cancer awareness. And when I first noticed men I knew not shaving a couple of years ago, my initial thought was “oh, he’s decided to grow a moustache”. Such lack of awareness might be my fault for not being trendy enough to know what was going on, but surely informing people about what’s going on was the purpose of the movement. I’d have thought a T-shirt or badge saying “Over-45 men, have you asked your doctor to insert his (or her) finger up your backside recently?” would have been more informative, although I admit that would be difficult to cram on to a badge.

Here in France, the national health system is organized enough for the sécurité sociale to send out reminders to men of the right (or wrong) age to get checked. I also seem to have reached a stage of inbuilt obsolesence advanced enough for my sécu to recommend a more general set of blood tests every three years. The only scary thing is the apparent lack of a general database. When I went to see my doctor about the prostate test, he said, yes, it was time to check again, unless you’ve had it done by someone else in the meantime. I assured him that I had been faithful to him since our last get-together, but wondered whether the French system of going to see any doctor who’ll give you an appointment might have spawned a perverse side-effect: “er, docteur, I’m worried about my prostate, could you possibly check?” At 22 euros a consultation, 70% of which is refunded by the state and the rest by your top-up scheme if you have one, some people might think this is good value.

All of which is in very bad taste and I apologize. And I do know that France’s system of obliging people to choose a single médecin traitant as their regular doctor is meant to cut out the chronic medical infidelity that goes on, but it is still possible to make an appointment with almost any doctor in the country and get a refund for the consultation and treatment prescribed.

Movember is clearly a good cause, but I don’t intend to grow a moustache (the world is a better place without it), so I hope that this blog contributes in some small way to prostate awareness. I still remember François Mitterrand, two-time president and survivor of one and a half world wars and several scandals including Rainbow Warrior, illegal phone taps, a secret love child, and alleged Vichyist sympathies, being cut down by prostate cancer in 1996. He was hiding the fact that he was a sufferer when first elected in 1981, and didn’t reveal it until he had an operation in 1994, while in office. Not much cancer awareness there. But if the clean-shaven men around him had been sprouting moustaches, maybe he would have found out in time to save himself.

So despite a certain difficulty in spotting French Movembristes – so many men here adopt the “Rasoir, moi?” look – and the likelihood that it will be poo-pooed by the anti-Anglo-saxon brigade, it might do something to help, which can’t be a bad thing.

I just wish that France would adopt that other “Anglo-Saxon” November tradition – the poppy. I wear one every year (made to order by a Parisian brooch designer, of course) and lots of people in Paris ask me why I am wearing a red paper flower (yes the brooch designer was a joke). Or rather, being Parisian, they just look at the red flower and frown. But weren’t the original poppies in French fields? OK, some of them were Belgian fields but during the First World War the border was pretty theoretical, given that much of it was buried under mud and empty shell cases. The French remember the 1918 armistice, but they don’t generally broaden out the subject to include veterans of all wars, or collect money for veterans in difficulty by selling poppies. Yet …